Chapter 7

"You've lost your mind," Haoran Yang said flatly.

Zhao signaled the turn and pulled into the apartment parking lot. It was late. The partygoers had eaten singed hot dogs and hamburgers, drunk beer and soft drinks and gone home. Only family remained, helping get the last few things moved over, doing a bit of unpacking while Min kept her feet up.

Zhao's father had arranged for the two of them to ride back from Zhao's old apartment together. He'd used the time to grill his son. Zhao had been expecting the interrogation ever since he'd introduced Min to Haoran three nights ago.

Not that Haoran Yang had been rude or unpleasant to Min. But it had been obvious to his son, at least that he wasn't happy with events. "Just say what you mean," Zhao said. "Quit beating around the bush."

"Dammit, Zhao, this isn't a joke. You've asked this young woman to marry you."

"Yes." Zhao pulled into his parking place near the streetlight. His hands flexed briefly on the steering wheel as satisfaction surged through him. He was making progress. He and Min now lived in their apartment, not hers.

His things were mingled with hers, and his name was next to hers on the lease. "You want to remember that," he told his father mildly as he turned off the ignition and pocketed the keys. "She's going to be my wife." His father snorted. "Not according to her." They both climbed out of the Jeep. Zhao went around to the back and began unloading the boxed odds and ends they'd brought over.

"I'd like a cigar," Haoran said. "Walk with me while I smoke one?"

Zhao considered picking up a box, carrying it inside and so cutting this conversation short. But his father would just find a way to have the discussion later. Better get it over with, he decided.

Haoran pulled out one of the fat cigars Ashi Yang hated. "Can't understand what all the fuss is about smoking," he grumbled as he held a match to the tip. "I don't dare light one of these things up anymore unless I'm outside, and pretty soon they'll be banning that, too." It was a familiar complaint. "And if they do, I'll probably wind up giving you a citation since you're too blasted stubborn to give up your cigars."

"You would, too, wouldn't you?" Haoran grinned suddenly. So did Zhao. The resemblance between the two men jumped into focus as clearly as if a switch had been turned.

It was a wolf's grin they shared—friendly, but hardly safe.

Haoran Yang was grayer, shorter and huskier than his oldest son. He had retired from the force two years ago but was still every inch a cop, and button popping proud that his sons had chosen to go into the force.

"So," Haoran said, slapping Zhao on the back. "Let's walk, and I'll explain why you're an idiot."

Zhao gave his father a wry glance, and fell into step with him.

The night was warm and damp, as if the heat and exertion of the day had made the air itself sweat. In the misty air the streetlights were ringed with hazy rainbows. Haoran stepped over the low hedge that separated the parking lot from the sidewalk. Zhao followed suit.

The street was better lit to the right, where a fast food place held down the corner, trailing a string of small businesses: a cleaner's, a tarot reader, a locksmith. To the left lay a couple of older homes, and darkness. Without speaking, the two of them turned left and proceeded at a slow stroll, looking not at each other, but out at the night.

Between them, they had sixty five years of watching the night.

"Now, I don't want you to take this wrong," Haoran said, puffing away at his cigar as they passed out of the circle of light from the streetlight. "But the plain fact is, a woman like that is trouble. I don't think she means to be," he added judiciously. "Been watching her tonight. She draws men like honey draws flies, but she probably can't help it, the way she looks."

"I'm trying not to take that the wrong way," Zhao said.

"Do you really think I'll have a problem with it if my wife is attractive to other men?"

Haoran glanced at him shrewdly. "Even if one of those other men is your brother?"

Zhao recognized interrogation techniques when he ran across them. Get the subject rattled, emotional, and see What shakes loose. "I wondered if you'd noticed," he said after a moment. "It's not going to be a problem."

"Even if she resists the temptation to stir up trouble between you, it might put a strain"

"Hold it." Zhao stopped walking. They were well away from the streetlight now, and his father was a vague shape in the dark, punctuated by the glowing orange tip of his cigar. "It won't be a problem because there's no way in hell Min would encourage Chen, even if he did take leave of his senses. Which he won't."

The cigar's tip flared brightly as his father inhaled,

'That's right," he said. "Chen won't. But the way you were watching the two of them tonight, I wasn't sure you knew that."

"I know it," Zhao said shortly. Women liked Chen, always had. Min was apparently no exception. And Chen obviously liked Min right back, which shouldn't have been a problem wouldn't have been one, he admitted, if things had been smoother between him and Min.

"Good," Haoran said. "Your brother has a bad case of 'white knight syndrome,' you know. I expect that's part of her appeal for him. No real harm in it."

"You'd know about that," Zhao said dryly. His father, his brother and the cousin who'd been raised with them all shared a tendency to play hero, with or without lance, steed and armor. An unhealthy trait, in Zhao's opinion. He was convinced it had passed him by.

Haoran nodded, then stood there, silently smoking.

Waiting.

Zhao was familiar with this trick, too. His father had used it on him often enough in the past. Be quiet long enough and the subject tends to jump in to fill the silence.

Unfortunately, knowing the trick wasn't the same as being proof against it.

An old pickup rattled down the road, followed by a white sedan. In the hush that followed Zhao gave in and spoke of what was bothering him. "I expected Mom to have a problem with all this," he said quietly, "not you. Yet she's accepted Min and the situation better than you have."

"That's because she thinks you're going to marry the girl."

"I am."

"Why?"

Zhao glanced at him, startled. "Aren't you the man who had a little talk with me when I turned fifteen? Something about either keeping my pants zipped, using protection or buying a ring, because if I got some girl in trouble her daddy wouldn't need to come after me with a shotgun. You'd do that yourself."

"What's right at fifteen and what's right at forty aren't always the same."

Restless, Zhao started back toward the light near the Jeep.

"If you're trying to make me believe you want me to turn my back on Min, don't bother."

"Well, now," his father said, falling into step with him.

"If you refused to be responsible for your baby or the woman carrying it, I guess I'd still hang you up by the balls. But you've done the right thing. You've offered marriage and been turned down. I respect her for that, by the way."

Zhao kept his silence, grimly certain his father wouldn't.

He was right. "You're bent on marrying her, and it's wrong. It's not fair to either of you. I don't know what her feelings are, but I know you. You don't love her."

With an act of will Zhao kept his fists from clenching.

"You're over the line."

"Not yet," Haoran said as they approached the Jeep.

"But I suppose I'm going to be." The tip of his cigar glowed again as he inhaled. "You want to know why I'm convinced you don't love her? First, I can't believe you wouldn't have mentioned her if she'd meant much to you before you knocked her up."

"Be careful," Zhao said. "Be very careful what you say."

"You going to tell me you two did have an ongoing relationship, then? You'd been dating for a while?"

"I'm going to tell you it's none of your damned business."

"The real kicker is the timing." Haoran stopped by the hedge in front of the Jeep. "My God, Zhao, do you think I can't do the math? The baby is due on March third, right?"

Zhao said nothing because there was nothing, absolutely nothing, he could say.

"It was conceived about the second week of June, then."

"Leave it alone," Zhao rasped. "For God's sake, drop it."

"I can't." Haoran tossed the burning stub of his cigar away. It arced out into the street. He faced his son. "Tell me I'm wrong, Zhao. Tell me you didn't take Min to bed after making another of your miserable pilgrimages to the cemetery. Tell me you didn't get that woman pregnant on the anniversary of Shi Yun's death."

The knowledge of his guilt made Zhao sick. It had been making him sick ever since that night. At the time, he hadn't been able to sort out which of the two women he'd wronged the worst, his dead wife or the new lover who was so very much alive. He hadn't known how to walk away from the one, so he'd walked out on the other or tried to.

He swallowed bile and turned away, toward the apartments... and Min.

She stood at the edge of the light, her face bone white in the dimness. "Is that true, Zhao? Is what he said true?"

"Min—"

"No." Her hand slashed the air. "I don't want to hear anything else, not now. Just tell me if it's true.

"Ma'am," Haoran said, "I'm sorry. I didn't know you were there. I would never have brought it up like that if I'd known."

Min couldn't move. Not yet. Nothing was working right, nothing but her voice. That was steady enough, when nothing else was. Her eyes flicked to the older man. He seemed genuinely distressed. "Don't worry about it. Sooner or later I'd have learned the significance of the date." If she'd looked at the clippings about Shi Yun Yang's death more closely, for example. The date of the issue showed in the slug line at the top of every page of the paper. Noticing that would have spared her tonight's hard lesson.

But she seldom learned anything the easy way, did she?

With this man in particular, it seemed, none of the lessons came easily.

She looked at Zhao again. "Zhao?"

He said nothing, and damned himself with his silence.

Her breath jerked painfully in her chest. "I came out to see what was keeping you so long. You'd better come in before your mother starts worrying." She turned and walked away carefully, because she couldn't feel her feet properly.

It was rather like being drunk, she thought as she went back inside. Like being drunk and trying desperately to act sober. She thought she did all right with Zhao's mother and brother as they and Haoran took their leave, but Xinou knew her too well. He studied her face, frowning, when she said good night to him and Shi Lei.

Yichen left soon after that, and she and Zhao were alone.

Min walked into their roomy new living room and looked around...at her two couches, and his dining table.

Her bookcases, his desk. Her Monet prints, his mantel clock.

Her baby. Conceived on the anniversary of his wife's death.

"I'm sorry," he said from behind her.

"It doesn't matter."

"That's one of the most stupid things I've ever heard you say."

She felt the tight twist of anger, warm when the rest of her was cold. She wanted to protect that warmth, keep it close, private. "Why would it matter? I already knew you used me that night. You were so damned deliberate about it all. This just supplies your motive. I've often wondered about that."

Silence followed by a sudden, splintering crash. She whirled around, her hand at her throat.

Zhao stood near the blue couch. Shards of a white ceramic lamp lay on the table, the floor, and the couch, scattered as if someone had hit it with a bat. But Zhao hadn't used a bat. Blood welled from his fist and dripped slowly onto the beige carpet. "Don't say it doesn't matter," he said fiercely.

"You're bleeding," she said, staring stupidly at the blood, shiny crimson blood, coating his knuckles and dripping, dripping.

"Don't you dare shut down on me." He started toward her.

She looked from his closed, bloody fist to his face. His jaw was tight and his eyes were wild and she wondered she did wonder why she wasn't afraid. "You cut your hand when you hit your lamp," she told him as if he might not have noticed. She didn't understand. Zhao—orderly, controlled Zhao—had punched out his lamp?

"I lost it." He stopped in front of her and dragged his undamaged hand across his hair. "Can you understand that? I'm human. Push me far enough and I get stupid."

"What are you so angry about?" she demanded. "If anyone has a right to be angry, it's me!"'

"So get mad!" He put both hands on her shoulders, the clean one and the bloody one, and gave her a little shake.

"Yell at me. Curse me. Tell me how sorry I am!"

She brought her hands up together then shoved them apart, knocking his hands off. "Don't touch me! Don't you ever touch me again."

"Why not?" he growled, moving in close. "Why not, Min, when you like it so much?"

Something cracked open inside her. "You used me!

Damn you, we were friends and you used me! I knew it, I knew it from the moment you walked out the door that night. You got what you wanted and you left, but now...now—" Her fisted hands dug her nails into her palms and she tried— she tried hard—to hold back the next words, but they poured out. "Were you thinking of her?

When you made love to me, were you thinking of her?"

"When I touch you, Min, I can't think of anything but touching you more."

She drew in a shaky breath. That was something. Not much, but something.

He reached out. She backed away. "No. No touching.

You owe me some answers, Zhao." He nodded, his eyes wary.

She swallowed. "What your father said...about that night. Did you go to the cemetery first, before meeting me?" The thought made her sick to her stomach.

"No." His answer came swiftly, definitely. "I'd gone there before on that date, but not this time. This time...I wanted to put the grief behind. I wanted to move on."

"Was I supposed to help with that?" she asked bitterly.

"A little sex with a willing woman on the anniversary of your wife's death to convince yourself you'd 'moved on'?"

"You want me to tell you how it happened? I don't know, dammit! I'd worked so blasted hard not to let the lust and the guilt control me. For two years I'd see you and I'd want you, and it ate at me. It was like an acid, the wanting, eating away down inside me somewhere maybe I thought I could get you out if I just once satisfied this craving. If so, I was wrong. I was sure as hell wrong, and I couldn't handle it."

Blood pounded in Min's ears, an angry drumming. "So you walked out on me."

"Yes. I'm not proud of it, but that's what I did." She wanted to scream, to rage at him, hit him... hurt him.

Instead, she heard herself speak the one truth she'd fought to keep hidden. "You hurt me," she said. Her voice broke.

"I thought I knew you, and you hurt me."

"Zhao sorry," he said again, and for once his emotions were easy to see in his eyes— winter eyes, haunted by his own pain and the knowledge of hers.

"What is it you want? My forgiveness?"

"Can you give it?"

"I don't know." She shook her head, dizzy with emotion. How could she forgive him? How could he even ask her to? "I don't know how."

When he spoke again, some quality in his voice chilled her, warned her. "There's one more thing I should tell you about that night. I didn't want you to know any of this, but maybe I was wrong about that. Maybe you have to know it all."

"What?" What more could there be?

"When that driver smashed into Shi Yun's car, she was two months pregnant. I didn't know until she went into surgery. She may not have known, either."

She stared at him. Her anger drained out, as if his words had created a vacuum. And in that vacuum was only one thought at first: Zhao's baby died. Along with his wife, he'd lost his baby.

Two months pregnant, she thought then. Min had been two months and four days pregnant when she went to police headquarters and told him he would be a father. A few days later she had nearly lost their baby. She looked at him now, standing braced and blank faced in front of her, and realized he expected her to be angry about this, too.

How could he think she would be angry? Unless maybe that's what he wanted from her, anger and blame. Maybe, in the irrational way of humans, he felt guilt over a death two deaths he was in no way responsible for.

Something nameless and complex moved inside her, a feeling as bitter as winter and as irresistible as the coming of spring. It had nothing to do with pity, and everything to do with need.

His need or hers? She didn't know. For the moment, just this one moment, it didn't matter. Whatever the force filling her, it steadied her as she moved closer to him. She didn't know what to say, so she lifted his damaged hand and cradled it in both of hers.

Min intended, vaguely, to give comfort. Whatever effect the contact had on him, the result for her was like closing a circuit. The thrill sang in her blood like an electric charge, exciting and excessive. She kept her head down, swallowed, and tried not to cry. "I'm sorry you lost your baby,

"I didn't want it," he said, his voice terrible with grief and guilt. "I'd told Shi Yun I didn't want to have children.I was afraid to. I'd seen so much..."

Now she looked up. The bleakness on his face made her lose the battle, and tears blurred her vision. "You wanted the baby," she said softly. "Maybe you were afraid, and maybe you didn't know about it until it was too late, but you wanted it."

He said her name. His hands came up to her face, and her tears spilled over. He cupped her cheeks and jaw, and his thumbs stroked the dampness from her cheeks as if she were the one who needed comfort.

Maybe she was.

"Min?" he said again.

She turned her face in his hands and kissed his palm.

He stood very still for a long moment. Then his eyelids lowered as he looked at her mouth. He bent.

His lips were soft against hers. Whatever his intent— taking or giving comfort, gratitude, the simple need for contact the mild intimacy stirred the singing in her blood.

Irresistibly her lips followed his when he withdrew.

His need or hers? She was afraid this time she knew the answer.

His mouth came back to her. His lips were more definite this time, stating his sensual intent clearly and wordlessly.

His hands slid from her cheeks to her jaw, her throat, down to her shoulders. She shivered. He pulled her against him, and she went gladly. If she worried for a moment about his hand and the untended hurt, she forgot everything else in the sheer joy of tasting him again.

His body was hard, perfect. At this point, even his clothes felt perfect crisp cotton, rugged denim. The textures delighted her, offering just enough of a barrier to heighten the tension. Her fingertips slipped inside the collar of his shirt to tease the nape of his neck. He shuddered and deepened the kiss.

That quickly, delight changed to hunger.

Heat flowed through her, basic and urgent. Min moaned and pressed against him. His hands raced over her, testing, molding, inciting. She wanted this yes, this hunger, the splendid burn of passion— I can do this, she told herself.

I can have what I need. I'm not expecting anything this time. I won't be hurt again.

"Min," he said, tearing his mouth away to press kisses across her cheek. "I'll stop if you ask me to. I swear, this time I'll stop if you tell me no."

She looped her arms around his neck. "Don't stop."

"Thank God," he said, so heartfelt and sincere that she amazed herself by laughing. She was still laughing when he swung her up into his arms.

It felt sweet, giddy, frightening. "Zhao?" She clung to him. "You aren't going to try climbing those stairs carrying me, are you? I'm no Scarlett. I don't need a lot of romantic trappings."

"Maybe I do. But just this once," he said, turning toward the longest couch, the red one, "I'll compromise." On the inside, Min was laughing again as he lowered her and followed her down but only inside, because her mouth was busy with his.

Yes, she wanted this, needed it. She didn't need Zhao, she told herself as her fingers fumbled with his buttons, hungry for the feel of his skin. But she needed the heat, the speed, the sheer dazzlement of her senses he could bring her. Release, she thought as she pressed kisses across the chest she'd exposed. That's what I need the huge, dizzy plunge, and the release.

She willfully ignored the fact that she only wanted it from one man. This man.

"Min," he said as her hands on his chest, her lips on his throat, drove him up hard and quick. "Sweetheart, give me a minute. Slow down."

She couldn't slow down. She didn't have a minute. If she got him inside her— once she got him inside her— everything would be all right again. She knew that. Breathless, needy, she pulled his shirt out of his pants. "I want you in me, Zhao. Now."

He groaned and pushed her dress up past her waist. His hands were hot against the skin of her stomach, her thighs.

Then they raced up her body to her breasts. He cupped them, kneaded them, while his mouth came back to hers, and his tongue plunged inside.

The kiss went on and on. Min had been wild before. She was crazy now, ready to demand that he hurry. Or to beg.

Her hands went to his waist, and she fought with the snap of his jeans and then the zipper.

He was large and throbbing beneath the placket. She made a frustrated noise when she couldn't get the zipper down, and stroked her hand along him. He hissed, and pushed her hands away. Then he tore his mouth and body from hers, and stood.

"All right," he said. "We'll do it your way. You want it fast? Take them off," he told her. "Take your panties off. I want to look at you."

Min wiggled out of the lacy triangle while he pulled off his boots and tossed aside his shirt. His eyes never left her.

Then he paused, his hand on his zipper. Her dress was rucked up to just beneath her breasts and she was bare from the waist down, and he just stood there looking. The longer he stared at her, the hotter she got, until she was breathing through her mouth in soft, quick gasps.

It was enormously erotic, lying there exposed, watching him strip while he looked at her, his eyes hot and acquisitive. He was lean and muscular and, in places, he was scarred and he was hers. For now, for this joining, at least, he was hers.

She opened her arms to him as well as her legs as he came down on top of her for one more kiss. Their mouths were already joined when he raised her hips in his two big hands and slid into her. Slowly. Carefully. Completely.

She cried out, in wonder and in need. With slow, patient strokes, he answered her cry. But she couldn't stand patience from him, not now. With her teeth and nails and the urgent thrusts of her own body, she demanded more, harder, faster.

Again he answered. If he held anything back, any part of himself that stayed behind on their mad race to watch and be sure he didn't hurt her or the baby, she was too lost in the oblivion of speed to notice.

They moved together, each glorying in the freedom of needs, long suppressed, that they now set loose needs that were both met and doubled with each plunge, each sweaty movement of bodies locked in the sweetest of rhythms.

He stabbed the fingers of one hand through her hair and took her mouth with his. She gave him her tongue and claimed his in return, fierce and rejoicing as she raced straight at the cliff's edge. A moment later her body bucked against his when she hit the white hot, endless space of climax.

She cried out, and didn't know it was his name she called.

He followed her over.

Zhao managed to collapse onto his side instead of directly on top of her, though with the narrowness of the couch, they stayed almost as close together as they had been a few seconds ago. Her legs tangled with his. His arm pillowed her head, and he felt the heat of her breath on his shoulder.

She lay snuggled up to him.

In the quiet aftermath, Zhao could hear his ragged breathing, and hers. He waited, hoping against hope she would speak to him this time as she had the other time they were together. Then, she'd spoken softly to him of delight and discovery. She'd made him smile. Damn her, she'd cracked something inside him open that night, something he'd been trying ever since to wall up tight again, but it was too late.

It had been too late then, but he hadn't realized it in time.

When she'd seen his smile on that other night, she'd turned unexpectedly playful. She'd started tickling him— which had led inevitably to a second lovemaking.

But Min wasn't going to talk or play this time, was she?

Zhao lay there in silence, holding the woman he'd wanted for so long...a woman who didn't give second chances.

The longer he lay there, the more certain he became.

Having her physically wasn't enough. Compared to what he'd had and tossed away, this wasn't nearly enough.