Golden Lies - Barbara Freethy [46]
"I don't want your apology."
"I shouldn't have told you, but I—"
"I already knew," Victoria said harshly. "Did you think I was stupid?"
A look of truth passed between them, and Jasmine realized that she had not betrayed David's secret at all. It had never been a secret, or perhaps only for a short time. His wife was not the fool; Jasmine was. In some strange way, the secrecy of their affair had made the love between them seem deeper, more important. Theirs had been a passion forbidden by society. In her heart she had always believed that only great passions dared to cross the bounds of propriety.
"Did you think you were the only one?" Victoria added, taking delight in sending another shaft through Jasmine's heart. "Ah, I see. You did believe that. What a pity."
Victoria was wrong. David had told her many times that he had only come to her and no one else. Was he the liar? Or was it his wife?
She turned away from the bed, then stopped, startled by the presence of another woman in the doorway—Paige. Behind her was the man who had come to the apartment with her earlier. She wondered how long they had been standing there, how much they had heard.
"Mother?" Paige asked. "Is everything all right?"
"Everything is fine," Victoria said with ice in her voice. "Ms. Chen was just leaving. And she won't be back."
No, she wouldn't be back. This was not her place. This was not her role. She didn't come to David; he always came to her, and having met the cold-hearted woman who called herself his wife, Jasmine understood much more clearly just why he had come to her in the first place and why he couldn't seem to stop himself from coming back. A spiteful part of her wanted to tell Victoria exactly that. But when Paige moved to stand next to her mother, the spitefulness faded. Paige was David's daughter, and unlike her mother, she seemed terribly worried about her father. Even now she had her hand on his arm, as if she would protect him from the tension in the room. Paige didn't deserve to be caught in the middle.
"I am leaving," Jasmine said. "I wish your father well."
"Ms. Chen, wait," Paige said unexpectedly.
Jasmine felt a shiver run down her vine at the question in Paige's eyes, the nervousness in her stance as she looked from her mother to her father, to Jasmine.
"Don't get involved in this," Victoria warned her daughter. "It does not concern you."
"I think it might. I think she's Dad's—"
"I know what she is." Victoria cut her off abruptly.
"You do?"
"Yes, I've known about her for years."
"Have you also known about Alyssa?"
Jasmine's heart stopped. How did Paige know about Alyssa? That was one secret she was sure David had kept. Victoria, too, looked taken aback, her face as white as her suit.
"Stop, Paige, please just stop. Don't say whatever it is you're thinking," Victoria said.
"I can't. I have to know. Do Alyssa and I share the same father?"
Chapter Nine
Alyssa checked her watch as she got off the bus early Friday morning and headed toward her mother's apartment in Chinatown. She hated going into the neighborhood, with its crowded buildings, the smells of fish and livestock in the butcher shops, her mother's small apartment with its dark rooms, its heavy cloud of incense, the memories of so many nights when she had gone to sleep hearing her mother cry—because of him. The him who remained a mystery even today. The man who had fathered her, who had left her and her mother, who had caused them to live in shame, who had made her half white, half Chinese, half of nothing.
Her friends told her that her unusual looks—her brown eyes, long black hair, pert, pointed, very un-Asian nose—made her more beautiful, more exotic, but she knew the truth. Different wasn't beautiful; it was just