The Pearl of Paradise

  Five years ago, covert operative Damon Alexander became guardian of the sacred ivory carving, the Pearl of Paradise, and he sacrificed any chance for a life with the woman he loved, the price required to save her from being killed by his archenemy, Kwan. The vow curses him to die, should he leave holy ground, but his enemy is back and is picking off those Damon cares for most, taunting Damon to risk the curse to stop him.

  Lily Shen has spent five years closing off her heart from Damon after his devastating betrayal, but hearing that he means to sacrifice his life to stop the killing, she knows that she may have the only means to save him—by revealing to him that he has a son. When Kwan kidnaps their child, the love that never died draws them together in a race to find some means to break the curse and save the son Damon has never met.

  The Pearl of Paradise

  Jean Brashear

  Copyright © 2011 Jean Brashear

  Smashwords Edition

  Copyright © 2011 Jean Brashear

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to your online retailer and purchase your own copy.

  Thank you for respecting the author’s work.

  Cover art by Angie Bare:

  www.angiebare.com

  Formatting by BB eBooks:

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  Table of Contents

  Cover

  About The Pearl of Paradise

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Epilogue

  Author’s Note

  Romantic Suspense From Jean Brashear

  Excerpt from The Light Walker

  Excerpt from The Choice

  Excerpt from The Pearl of Paradise

  Excerpt from Texas Refuge

  Excerpt from Texas Star

  Excerpt from Texas Danger

  About the Author

  Connect With Jean

  … in the hands of a virtuous man, the Dragon’s Pearl will strengthen his virtue and make him a powerful force for good, provided it remains on sacred ground. In the hands of an evil man, darkness will reign.

  … the guardian of the Pearl of Paradise, known as the Dragon, is forbidden to leave the Pearl unguarded, nor can he remove the Pearl from sacred ground… Bound forever to his oath, he must watch over the Pearl of Paradise—until the Dragon and his Pearl are one again…

  —the Legend of the Pearl of Paradise

  Chapter One

  Kwan’s going to keep picking off the people Damon loves until Damon comes out of sanctuary. Her half-brother’s warning reverberated in Lily’s head. Staring out the window of her tiny San Francisco apartment, biting her lower lip, Lily Shen wished she knew what to do. Though she’d spent five years banishing Damon from her mind, she shivered at Chang’s ominous tone.

  “And then they’ll kill him the second he steps off sacred ground.”

  She knew Chang was right. Kwan hated Damon. He’d dropped out of sight for five years, but now he was back, seeking revenge for the humiliation and defeat he’d suffered at Damon’s hands. Kwan had breached sacred ground against all taboos and killed a holy man. Damon’s warrior skills had been the only thing that stopped Kwan from stealing the Pearl of Paradise, as well.

  “I have to go to him.” She turned to face Chang.

  “Why? Damon sent you away five years ago. He broke your heart.” Chang glared at her, ever the big brother, if only by a year.

  “But I can’t let him die.”

  “You hate him.”

  But I once loved him with every breath in my body. She glanced to the side, studying the weak bar of sunlight slanting across the scarred wooden floor. “Hatred is a difficult emotion to sustain.”

  “Kwan has managed to do it. Don’t be foolhardy, Lily. Damon is safe as long as he guards the Pearl.”

  “Not if he leaves sacred ground.”

  “So you still care.”

  Her chin jutted forward. “I didn’t say that.”

  “Then why are you doing this?”

  Why indeed? She shook her head slowly, lifting her gaze to the brother she hadn’t met until she was ten. “It’s only fair to tell him that he has a son. If he will live for nothing else, he must know about Gregory.”

  “Are you mad? How do you know Damon will care? Are you certain that he doesn’t already know?”

  “He couldn’t. I didn’t know I was pregnant when—”

  “When he threw you out. Remember that, Lily. He set you aside like you were nothing to him.” Chang muttered under his breath, beginning to pace and running long fingers through coal-black hair. “He might already know about Gregory.”

  “Not unless you’ve told him.” For a long moment of silence, their eyes met. Subtly ashamed, she lowered her gaze. She had no right to challenge her brother’s ethics. They might have grown up in different worlds, she as a half-breed orphan, but she knew his sense of honor, his discretion. He saw Damon almost daily, but he’d never broken faith with her. He’d said he’d keep her secret, and he would.

  “No one knows, Chang. When I rarely get to see my own child, how is anyone else to know he’s mine?”

  She looked out the window again, studying the fog moving in over the Bay, rubbing her arms as though she could warm the chill fear invading her heart.

  “What if he doesn’t care? Are you willing to gamble Gregory’s life on it? Or your own?”

  The burning in her stomach increased. She hugged both arms around her waist, trying to ease the pain.

  Barely whispering, she averted her eyes. “And what of Damon’s life, Chang? Is no one to speak up for him?” Her voice grew stronger. “While he’s busy protecting everyone else,” she glared in defiance, “who protects Damon?”

  An hour’s drive north, Damon Alexander knelt in the earth of the temple garden, planting the first seeds for the new summer’s crop. The small patch of sunlight he’d carved from the heavy growth of forest warmed his back through his sweater, as he wished it could warm his chilled soul.

  The life he’d hoped to reshape in tribute to Fan Lee had assumed a sameness, a series of umber days with little shading. He knew Fan Lee hadn’t meant to entomb him here, guarding the Pearl of Paradise—

  But Fan Lee never expected him to expel Lily from sanctuary. The old holy man, to whom Damon owed every scrap of humanity he possessed, thought Lily and Damon would be living in sanctuary together.

  Sanctuary. Sacred ground. It could have been paradise, here in the green world that was his home. With Lily, it would have been.

  Until Lily died at the hands of Kwan, just like Fan Lee had.

  He couldn’t risk it, so he’d forced her away. He could still see the raw desperation, the tearing of her self-esteem reflected in Lily’s eyes. He’d had to be brutal—there’d been no other way. She’d never have left.

  He couldn’t let her die, like his mother… like Fan Lee… let down by the man they trusted to save them.

  But God, how it hurt him still. By the time he’d finished, her hurt had turned to hatred. Though it was what he knew must happen, knew was the only way, his own heart had died with hers.
>
  The Pearl of Paradise exacted a heavy toll from its guardian. Especially from one who’d been thrust into the role without preparation. Fan Lee was the last of his Shaolin sect; he’d had no time to train a replacement. Would his forebears ever have imagined a Caucasian as the Dragon, guardian of the Pearl?

  “Damon?”

  He looked up, startled, and rose to his feet, brushing the dirt from his hands on his faded jeans, welcoming Chang’s interruption of his black thoughts. He glanced at the slender young man before him, only a child when Fan Lee took him in, as he had Suelin… and Lily… and so many others, creating a family to replace his lost brotherhood. Even Damon, fully grown when he’d come to Fan Lee for kung fu training, had been welcomed as part of them. It had not seemed to matter to any of them that he had not one drop of Chinese blood.

  Damon had had to get past the pain of seeing Chang almost daily, knowing that Lily’s half-brother still saw her—but certain that, to Chang above all others, he had to maintain his pose of disinterest.

  “What is it?” He noted the shadowed expression on the young man’s normally serene face.

  “I beg your pardon, Dragon, for the interruption. It’s another message. Found in Suelin’s hand after she was—” Chang brushed roughly across eyes already slightly reddened.

  Another victim. Another mark on his soul. It was him that Kwan wanted, yet innocent people suffered.

  Damon closed his eyes, wondering how birds could be singing when such rage shot through him. The gentle, soft breeze sighing across his skin maddened him, so out of place was the peace around him with his own heart rapidly draining of hard-won serenity. Drawing a deep breath, he reached out for the envelope Chang gripped tightly in one hand.

  “Kwan.” He had no need to open it, so sure he was that the message would be just like the last one. How had Kwan grabbed the reins of power in the tong after the dishonor he’d brought upon himself? In five years, too much had changed. Kwan should have been banished forever for breaching sacred ground to murder Fan Lee. Instead, he led Fan Lee’s ancient enemies… and now taunted Damon to come out of sanctuary. One by one, he was stalking the members of Fan Lee’s rag-tag ‘family’, and the police could do nothing at all.

  Damon glanced up at Chang’s gasp, then his gaze followed Chang’s to the ideograms penned with great precision on the thick, creamy paper.

  “He will kill you, Dragon. You cannot go outside to meet him.”

  Damon’s fists clenched at his sides. “I can defend myself.” He tried not to recall how many he had killed in his years of covert operations—before Fan Lee showed him a different path. He glanced up, his gaze hardening. “I’m not afraid.”

  “No one could ever call you coward,” Chang’s gentle reproof echoed. “But what of all those who depend upon you?”

  Damon’s jaw flexed. “They’ll do fine.”

  “If you are gone, who will defend the Pearl? And what of the curse?”

  The curse. The damned curse.

  And what of his promise to a dying Fan Lee?

  Bad enough you let Kwan kill Fan Lee, Damon. Now you’re going to let the old man down again?

  Just like he’d let down his mother. He could still hear Kwan’s boyish taunts as they’d both scrabbled to survive the drug lord Santangelo’s beatings. “You let her down, Damon, and your old lady died. You’re not so tough.”

  Damon struggled to breathe as the trap closed in upon him. Tried not to remember those years of degradation at Santangelo’s hands, when the boy Damon first learned about the cruelties of the world. His junkie mother had fallen deep into debt with Santangelo, and when she’d become too sick to whore for him anymore, he called in his debt from Damon. Indentured to a drug lord at the ripe old age of fourteen, Damon had done everything he could to save his mother.

  But he’d failed.

  A tiny shudder ran through the man who bore no traces of the vulnerable boy Santangelo had instructed well in the lessons of hatred. It was old business—no point in dredging up memories. Nodding to Chang, Damon thrust the message into his hands, then strode away into the woods, picking up speed as though he could outrun his failures.

  Like a tiger pacing his cage, the Dragon longed for a freedom he could barely remember.

  Freedom exchanged for a promise soaked in blood.

  At twilight, Lily entered the old side gate she’d used so often when Fan Lee was alive. Ivy tumbled over the high stone wall; shadows crept across the deep green grass surrounding the flagstone courtyard between the living quarters and the temple.

  For a moment, she had to stop and simply force her lungs to breathe, her heart to resume beating—so powerful was her sense of coming home.

  For five long years, she’d only existed, she realized. All the hours she’d spent since she last saw this place dissolved as though spun sugar, so insubstantial they’d been in the matter of feeding her soul.

  She thought she might be sick, facing all she’d lost. No home, no comfort… no child.

  Damon had driven her out of paradise. He’d robbed her of the only home she’d ever known. He’d given her a child, then stolen him as surely as if he’d locked her son away from her forever. Simply by virtue of his existence, Damon took away her chance to be the mother she yearned to be.

  Maybe hate wasn’t so hard to maintain, after all.

  If Damon died, she’d be free. Her child would be free, for a small boy could assert no claim to guardianship of the Pearl. Damon’s role had been thrust upon him; it was not his by right. It would not endanger his son, if the father were dead.

  Lily half-turned, poised to leave, desperate to drown out the surges of pain… anger… longing…

  And then, quick as the shadow he’d been, he appeared as if by magic. His form towered over her in the dimming light, and Lily raised her head to look at him, though she would have known him with her eyes closed.

  “Lily.”

  That slight New Orleans drawl still colored the voice she heard far too often in her dreams. She wondered now why she’d thought it wise to come.

  Glancing up, she thought her heart might stop. Damon had always had the face of a dark angel and the cold blue eyes of a killer, but for one endless moment, she thought she saw in those wells of blue a depth of pain and longing she ached to heal. A thousand memories swept like a hot wind through her body—of those eyes alight with teasing… glowing with desire… caressing her with velvet care… Her hand rose of its own accord, and she took one step forward to offer comfort—

  Blue eyes turned glacial, and the drawl hardened. “Get out, Lily. You don’t belong here anymore.”

  Chapter Two

  A flash of rage scorched through her at his harsh tone. Lily sucked in a breath at the sudden pain. How could she have forgotten, even for a moment, how much he’d hurt her before?

  But never again. Drawing herself up, she tried to find the words to tell him why she’d come. Her gaze searching over his stony visage, she looked for a trace of the sorrow she thought she’d seen, then shook her head. Ten kinds of fool you are, Lily. He was a hard man when you knew him before, except—

  Except when he’d held her in his arms.

  “No.”

  He merely cocked one dark eyebrow, then tilted his head as though she’d said something amusing. “No, Lily?” He clucked his tongue. “Surely you don’t expect to come back here after all this time.”

  A swift breath hissed through her teeth, then she composed her face into the mask she’d learned to wield. “I wouldn’t come back here if you paid me.”

  “Then we don’t have a problem, do we? Just leave the way you came, and that will be that.”

  “They’re going to kill you if you step outside, Damon.”

  A shadow crossed his face. “That’s not your concern.”

  The sick feeling dropped like a stone all the way down into her belly. “You can’t let Kwan draw you out.”

  His glacial gaze bored into her. “So I sit here, doing nothing, while other
s suffer?” He shook his head. “I don’t think so.”

  “What of your promise? You pledged to guard the Pearl.”

  “It’s only an object, Lily. A small carved ivory lotus. I’m not Buddhist. It was sacred to Fan Lee, not to me.”

  “You gave your word to him.”

  Damon looked away, the muscles in his jaw flexing. “What would you have me do? It’s me Kwan wants. It’s me he’s killing others to draw outside.”

  “It’s the Pearl, too—you know that. Fan Lee devoted his entire life to protecting it, as others did before him. He had no one else to trust. He trusted you, Damon.”

  Anguish slid over the noble visage. “I can’t let anyone else die. I have to meet him and finish this. Surely the Pearl—”

  Abruptly, he stopped. Stiff as a stone, he turned his gaze toward her. “That’s enough, Lily. Leave—now. If I have to throw you out myself, I’ll do it.”

  “But, Damon—”

  “Now!” he roared. Lowering his voice, he looked at her for a long moment, his expression inscrutable, his eyes chips of stone. “Goodbye, Lily. Don’t come back.”

  And with that, he turned and walked away.

  Her heart in her throat, her mind whirling, Lily started to follow, to deliver the message she’d come to give him. Watching the set of his shoulders, tears stinging her eyes, Lily stopped, her own shoulders sagging.

  And walked away, back into exile.

  Damon strode with steady purpose, desperate to get away from her before the sight of her, the sound, the smell of Lily so close drove him to his knees. In five years, the coltish girl had blossomed into all woman. Her slender frame curved in all the right places, but that wasn’t what hit him the hardest.

  It was her damn courage, the spirit that spilled all around her as she stood there, not even reaching his shoulder, all but daring him to make good on his words.

  In all the years that he’d dreamed of Lily since he’d last held her, he’d forgotten that. When he’d shoved her away, burying the man who came alive in her arms, he’d forgotten that beneath the porcelain skin beat a heart as courageous as a lion’s. Underneath that straight, thick ebony hair spilling down her back was a nimble brain, quick to grasp new ideas, eager to learn anything and everything. With her, cherished in her arms, he’d felt reborn, untainted.