The Doll Brokers Page 19

  He paused for a moment. “On principle, or is it a health thing?”

  “Principle.”

  “Oh. Then either call down and change the order, or live dangerously for one night.”

  “Why would you do something like this?” she demanded.

  “Something like what?”

  “Order dinner for me!”

  “Must be these Lancelot tendencies of mine.”

  “I don’t need anyone to…to—”

  He waited.

  “I don’t need anybody,” she finished, hating the hitch in her voice.

  “Ann, I really don’t feel like discussing your amazing strength right now. I want to take a shower. I stink.”

  “Well, I want my key.”

  His sigh gusted into the line. “Fine. Meet me in the hallway. I’ll toss it to you.”

  They had not been given adjoining rooms. Or a suite. Ann tried to be grateful for that. She hung up and went to the door. He was already in the corridor. Shirtless and barefoot, in jeans, looking amused. Something poked at her insides. He lofted the key in her direction and she caught it across some twelve feet of space.

  She turned without saying anything and went back to her room. She freed the Dewar’s from the cabinet. With drink in hand, she hit the bathroom, turning the shower on hot, then she stared at her reflection in the mirror. He’d had her doing the same thing in Chicago, she remembered, just staring at herself in the bathroom glass. But this time she didn’t feel brittle and empty. She felt … achy.

  She wanted very much to break her own rules; it was a yearning that almost folded her in two. She wanted to be normal and weightless, and just give in to what he was suggesting. To touch and shiver and explore without walls. She didn’t want to be scared.

  Ann began ripping off her clothes—the khakis and shirt felt like they’d begun to adhere to her skin. She balled them up and heaved them to the floor, then grabbed her glass and took another deep guzzle of Scotch. She wasn’t just angry at him, she realized. She was upset with herself.

  In every other way—in every other area of her life—she had triumphed. No matter what Jonathan had said at the precinct, she’d taken nothing free from anyone. Yes, Felicia had given her a job, a series of jobs, but she’d made the company money. Yes, Felicia had gotten her a private tutor, but she had paid back every dime. No one would look at her now and think she was the daughter of a wayward, drugged-out mother. No one would look at her and correctly surmise that she was the loneliest person on earth.

  No one ever had to know, Ann thought. What she did personally was really no different from what she did professionally. Lovers and associates got from her exactly what she chose to give. She could offer up to Jonathan the woman he thought she was and never let him be any wiser. But, oh, God, how she wanted just one person, one man, to really know her.

  Ann began to shower. A sudden knocking on the outside door jolted her out of herself. She remembered that Jonathan had ordered room service.

  She shut the water, dragged herself into the bathrobe that had been left hanging next to the shower, and dashed to the corridor door. She jerked it open … and there he was. He still wore jeans, but now he had topped them with an obnoxious Hawaiian-print shirt.

  “Where’s the food?” She craned her neck to look behind him.

  “Ann, you really need to put on some clothes.”

  Heat streaked through her, followed by cold. She stared at him, her mouth forming words that wouldn’t come.

  “I meant that in a wholly hygienic sense.” He stepped past her into the room, holding a beer and his laptop. “But it got you thinking, didn’t it?”

  “No.” She turned to follow him with her eyes, then finally thought to slam the door shut.

  “Liar. By the way, while we eat we can see if we have any e-mails from home.” He indicated the laptop.

  “I’m not going to go to bed with you,” she blurted.

  He laughed.

  She wanted to jump on him. Wanted to just fling herself across the room and pummel him. Or drag the clothes off his body. She wanted to drive her fingers into his still-wet hair. She wanted to hate him and she wanted to give herself over to him completely.

  In the end, Ann went back to the bathroom. It wasn’t until she finished with her shower and stood dripping on the tile that she asked herself what she really, truly wanted. She towel-dried her hair. The pin-striped shirt was long, hitting her at mid-thigh. She put that on, along with panties, then sailed into the room, still rubbing her head with the towel. She wondered if she was playing games with him, trying to get his attention with what she was wearing.

  Room service had arrived. There was a small oval table in one corner and it was laden with food. Jonathan sat there, working at the cap of a fresh bottle of beer. Ann smelled fish. Good fish. Something like … Dover sole.

  Her stomach rolled. It had been entirely too long since she had last eaten. She went to the table and plucked the silver dome off her plate.

  It was sole. With lemon and a cream sauce she was sure contained wine. “How did you do this?”

  He looked up at her. “I learned to use a phone when I was three.”

  “You changed my order?”

  He sliced off a bite-sized portion of his steak, forked it into his mouth, and chewed. “That’s the general progression of things when one commits such a social gaffe,” he said finally, swallowing.

  She had to get her equilibrium back. “That wasn’t a gaffe. You just didn’t know.”

  “Watch it there, Ann. You’re starting to sound magnanimous.”

  “Stop eating and listen to me a minute.”

  Jonathan put his fork down too exaggeratedly. “Go ahead.”

  Ann sat. Carefully. “Thank you. For dinner.”

  “You are very welcome.”

  “But I’m still not going to bed with you.”

  CHAPTER 38

  Jonathan let her fall asleep in the chair. He closed his laptop and went to the door. He paused and looked back at her. She was tucked sideways, her knees drawn up protectively, offering a nice, long angle of leg. What was she afraid of? Sure, there’d been bad times between them, some jousting and nipping, but nothing to warrant the kind of unease he’d sensed in her today.

  He had never liked complicated sex. Her reaction to him should have turned him off, turned him away. But Jonathan found himself intrigued, picking at it. Theirs would be a temporary liaison anyway, he reasoned. They scraped off each other just a little too much for anything long term.

  He went back to his room. Worn out from the time change and too many hours without rest, Jonathan slept like the dead and was roused in the morning by an insistent rat-tat-tat on his door. He opened one eye. The bedside clock read just past seven.

  Feeling bleary-eyed and sluggish, he got up, narrowly remembering to pull on a pair of sweat pants before he opened the door.

  Ann was wearing a crisp white suit. She was rubbing her neck as though it was stiff, but she was all business. “Get dressed,” she said. “I talked to the police sergeant who issued the subpoena for Patrick’s arrest. He’s agreed to meet us at nine o’clock.”

  “Do I get to eat first?”

  “Is that all you ever think about?”

  He let his gaze climb her legs deliberately. “No.”

  “Damn it, stop that!”

  “Then take your clothes off and assuage my curiosity.”

  Ann felt it like a punch—an electric, immediate arousal all tied together with something that hurt. She turned away, heading for the door. “I’ll meet you downstairs.”

  “You’ll have a long wait. I’m going to order up breakfast first.”

  That stopped her. “We can grab something on the way.”

  “That makes no sense, Ann. They can be frying my eggs while I’m in the shower.”

  She rubbed her forehead, then came back into the room. “I’ll order. What do you want?”

  “Two eggs over easy, toast, potatoes, bacon. And I
don’t want to hear a word about my cholesterol.”

  “Hey, they’re your arteries.” She watched him head for the bathroom, finally breathing again when he disappeared inside and closed the door.

  She’d had another night of dreams. Mad Dog woven in with Jonathan, the two metamorphosing back and forth. She remembered thinking vaguely—as she had nodded off—that it was okay to let herself drift into sleep because Jonathan was with her. As though Mad Dog couldn’t come around if he was there. She’d just doze for a little while until he left, she’d thought. Then she’d woken, whimpering at two o’clock in the morning.

  She’d been awake ever since, trying to decide what to do about these recent developments between them.

  Give in to him, something inside her whispered. Give it up. She already knew that sex with him would be wild and exciting. And then it would be over. No harm done and she would move on. And if it was horrible, if he somehow sensed everything inside her that was lacking? So what? They’d never been close until now. They’d just go back to what they had been before all this had started—antagonistic, vaguely familial strangers.

  That was when she realized she had started caring about his opinion of her. Because she didn’t want him to know she was lacking. Broken. Used. Cold.

  She was still standing there, staring at the bathroom door, when it opened. Jonathan came out and looked around. “No food yet?”

  “Oh, shit,” she muttered, and went for the phone.

  She called room service, then she phoned New York. She tried to ignore his presence as he wandered in and out of the bathroom. At one point, she heard the buzz of a blow dryer. Then her call went through and she had her secretary on the line. She had briefed Dora on the Baby Talk N Glow situation before Patrick’s bail hearing.

  “How’s everything going?” Ann realized she was almost afraid to ask.

  “About what you’d expect,” Dora replied. “The wire service has picked up the story of Patrick’s arrest and we’ve been all over the news, except the truth has been exaggerated, making everything sound worse. Rumor has it that we won’t be able to continue with the doll. We’ve had calls from no less than eight competitors, all offering to take her off our hands.”

  “The damn sharks! What else?”

  “All the major buyers are howling.”

  Ann felt her anger rise. “Call them back and tell them nothing’s changed. We’re still going ahead with Baby Talk N Glow as planned.”

  “Okay, then.” Dora sounded pleased. “I’ll do my best to convince them.”

  “Tell them all that I’ll be in touch personally as soon as I get back to the States.”

  Ann hung up just as room service arrived. Jonathan sat at the table and dug in. She nibbled toast and drank coffee, and kept on her feet. At some point he’d changed into navy blue slacks and a white Polo shirt. She was glad he’d lost the Hawaiian print.

  “I want to go now,” Ann said, putting her half-eaten toast back on the plate.

  “Then by all means, let me jump to my feet and race out of here.” But he pushed his plate aside anyway.

  Ann went to the door and waited for him while he collected his wallet and key card.

  Outside of their hotel Jonathan was surprised to see how few pedestrians there were compared to yesterday afternoon. But it was early and Ann had mentioned that people no longer worked long hours, even if most owners and executives were on call day or night. Vehicular traffic was still congested, however. Jonathan had never seen so many Mercedes in one place at any one time. Walking a few blocks, he soon got caught up in the magic of the street names—Hanoi and Mody, Peking and Canton—all spelled out in Chinese as well as English.

  A few minutes later Ann had guided them to the entrance to the Star Ferry. It was far busier here. Men, women, and children, mostly locals mixed with a few foreigners, all lining up at the turnstiles, the majority willing to pay approximately the value of thirty American cents to travel first class on the upper deck, while a surprising number, bent on saving close to half that amount, were entering the lower deck.

  Hong Kong was comprised of two parts; Hong Kong Island itself, home of the stock market, banking, and head offices servicing the business community, and Kowloon, which catered more to tourists and whose territory led directly into mainland China. In the city guide in his hotel room, Jonathan had read that the Star Ferry, or Ferries, included twelve boats that traveled between Kowloon and Hong Kong Island on a regular basis, every day, seven days a week. Up until 1972 when a tunnel was built, and then the subway, or MTR, in 1979, this had been the only means of transportation between the two parts.

  Standing beside Ann now, waiting in line to board the ferry, Jonathan looked at her, grinned, and said, “1841.”

  She waited.

  “That was the year the British got the Chinese to sign a treaty ceding the barren island of Hong Kong to them.”

  “Wonderful.” She frowned, giving him a look that said she was really not interested.

  “This agreement was soon extended to include Kowloon.”

  “This is better than Paris, Jonathan. You seem to know everything.”

  “1898,” he said.

  Ann purposely kept her comments to herself.

  His grin extended. “That was the year the mighty British Empire had China sign a ninety-nine year lease giving them control of the New Territories, thereby lessening the chance of attack from the mainland.” He paused. “A little shortsighted, wouldn’t you say?”

  Despite herself, Ann asked, “And why is that?”

  “Because,” he said, “the first treaty left them with the rights to Hong Kong Island and the Kowloon peninsula in perpetuity, but the second was a lease that would expire in ninety-nine years. We arrive at 1997 and the British are caught looking ridiculous. It would have been impractical, if not foolhardy, for them to have tried to hold on to one part of the colony without the most important part, the New Territories, the parcel of land that bordered the mainland. Bye-bye British protectorate, and so much for perpetuity. It’s a shame, really. But what else could they have done?”

  Silence followed his little speech. Then Ann asked, “Are you through now?”

  Her disinterest didn’t bruise him, but he kept quiet after that. They entered the ferry through the gangway and took a seat on one of the wood benches. There was nothing glamorous about this ride. It was all a throwback to another era, with elderly coxswains, many of whom had missing or rotting teeth, riding alongside them. Yet the short journey across Victoria Harbour, all of eight minutes or so, was eye-catching if nothing else, despite the refuse in the water which included everything from pop and beer bottles to toilet paper, and too many other varieties of waste to count. The view was what made it worthwhile, however. In the near distance, high-rise office towers with neon signs gave off a multi-colored display. Closer, the odd sampan, oil tanker or cruise ship passed by.

  They arrived at Central District and Ann led the way off the ferry. A short walk brought them to Harcourt Road, where they turned east. Jonathan found this area to be more sterile and less cluttered.

  “What time did you call this guy, anyway?” he asked Ann, meaning the police captain.

  She shrugged. “I don’t know. Six-thirty, maybe?”

  “And he was there already, working?”

  “I got lucky.” Ann felt jagged, irritable. She wanted to sleep. She wanted to continue to tease Jonathan. She wanted to run and hide from everything.

  They arrived at the police station with twenty minutes to spare and were put in another dingy room with stone walls and a yellow linoleum floor to wait. Cop shops were the same the world over, she thought.

  Someone went to find Bruce Tang.

  The door opened within minutes and the man came into the room. “Sorry I kept you waiting,” he said with hardly the trace of an accent.

  Ann towered over him by a good four inches, but he was twice as round. Not fat, exactly, but stocky. He wore a white, short-sleeved dress shirt with
an aquamarine tie that was slightly askew. His black hair was razor-cut and his face oval. He had eager eyes.

  Ann moved to shake his hand. “You didn’t,” she said. “We’re early.”

  He pulled out a chair at the single table in the room and sat. “We’ve contacted your authorities in New York,” he said, looking only at Jonathan. “We certainly want Mr. Morhardt for questioning, but we are not charging him with a crime at this moment.”

  “Oh?” Jonathan said. “Then what’s this all about?”

  “Does the name Edmund Chow mean anything to you?”

  “Of course,” Ann said. “He has looked after our company’s manufacturing and product development here and in mainland China for the past ten years.”

  “He gave me the impression he hardly knew you. The story he told was one of duplicity. Patrick Morhardt attempted to steal one of his products from under his nose.” Papers on the desk were shuffled aside. “Yes, here it is.” He turned a sheet over. “Baby Talk N Glow. A doll that he says he was negotiating to sell to Hasbro that Patrick apparently took without authority for your company or himself, it was unclear which. Mr. Chow was quite adamant that this doll belonged to him and him alone. I was going to—”

  “Did he mention the inventor of this doll?” Ann interrupted. “Or the fact that our company signed a contract for worldwide rights, and that we paid him an advance of one point five million American dollars?”

  Captain Tang rose to his feet. Directing himself to Jonathan once more, he said, “My dear sir, if what this lady is saying is true then we had best get Mr. Chow in here for a round of serious questions.” He made to walk out of the room. “I’ll get one of my men on it right away…”

  “Don’t bother,” Jonathan stopped him. “The man’s absconded. We’ve been trying to reach him without success.”

  “Is that so?” the policeman said, returning to the room and reclaiming his seat. “We will see about that. Please—let me have the contact numbers you have for Mr. Chow.”

  Ann rattled them off. “But we have a more pressing issue,” she explained. “We must locate Charles Ling, the inventor of the doll. His company is called Mae Sing Creations. If anyone can shed some light on the situation, it should be him.”