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“Did I?”
“I’m not sure you meant it.”
His eyes narrowed. “What did I say?”
“You said you loved me.”
He breathed out hard through his mouth. He drank from his coffee until only dregs remained. “I shouldn’t have told you while I wasn’t sober.”
My heartbeat raced. “Did you mean it?”
“I meant it.” He reached across the table and took my hand. “And I still mean it this morning.”
“Wendel, I…”
“I understand if you feel differently.”
“I don’t know what to say,” I admitted, my voice barely above a whisper.
“You don’t have to say anything.” He squeezed my hand, his thumb stroking me. “I wanted to tell you before it was too late, even if my feelings are unrequited.”
I pulled my hand away from his and leaned back in my chair. I didn’t want to hurt him, but I couldn’t deny my own tangled emotions. Was I falling in love with him?
“You don’t even know my real name.”
Surprise flickered through his eyes. “Your name isn’t Ardis?”
“No.” I stared into my teacup. “It’s not.”
“I would like to know, if you wish to tell me.”
“Yu Lan.” I hadn’t spoken my name in years. “Jade Orchid. It means ‘magnolia’ in Chinese. I changed it when I left home.”
“Where is home for you?”
“A long, long way away.”
“Where in America?”
“San Francisco, California.”
He poured himself another cup of coffee. “I’ve never been. Is it beautiful?”
“Some parts of the city. Like Chinatown. Although my mother and I lived in what most people call a bad neighborhood.”
He poured too much cream into his coffee, he was listening so intently to me, and it overflowed a little into his saucer. “Bad? Because it was dangerous?”
“I grew up in a red-light district.”
He spluttered as he drank his coffee. Coughing, he set down the cup. “You did?”
“My mother ran a brothel.” I shrugged, my face heating. “When my mother came from China, she trained some Chinese girls to be sophisticated courtesans. Skilled in the arts of music, dance, and seduction.”
He stared at me. “Were you…?”
I put down the teacup with a decisive clink. “Are you asking if I worked as a whore?”
He cleared his throat and looked away, his cheeks flushed. “I meant no offense.”
