“My pearl,” he finally said.

She wouldn’t bring up “China doll.” She was certain he no longer thought of her in those terms. “Until very recently I was a phoenix in a reverse painting,” she whispered.

Again that soft laughter that wrapped around her. “Now you’re a pearl, formed in the soft tissues of an oyster, hardened by the roughness of the sand.”

There was so much promise in his voice, that Nola felt her soul lying bare before him, his fingerprints all over it. She could count the places on her body he would touch.

CHAPTER 39

CHAPTER 39

On Nola's second day at the embassy, Trentafillos told her, “Madame Ambassador has been detained on important business and won’t return until tomorrow.”

Perhaps it was a good sign that her escape from China had ceased to be headline news, Nola decided. It was no longer a pressing issue to hasten the ambassador’s return. She’d have a rare vacation day, a break before facing whatever awaited her. And she could use unpressured time with Lulu. There was nothing like filling her baby’s tireless, sponge-like mind with new discoveries.

Nola emptied her duffel bag to take inventory of her few clothes. None was appropriate for a hot day of leisure. She removed the batik tablecloth and tied it around her hips like a sarong and pranced toward the mirror. Imagining Daniel’s response to the style made a coquettish, delicious shiver run through her. After that climactic plunge on stage, they were now connected in a life-changing experience, in a pledge that was still shaping itself as it gathered force across the thousands of miles separating them.

She turned on the radio, and with Lulu in her arms, twirled around the room. “Do you like dancing? Here’s a song for you.”

“Yoo,” Lulu said.

Nola tilted her head from right to left and to the right again. “Look at me, here,/ Look at me, there,/ Look me right in my eyes,/ And nod your head from side to side.” She kissed the baby and waltzed some more.

She went on practicing her voice and scribbling new lyrics. There was a career she would soon return to—and a mission more worthwhile than any she had ever tackled. With Lulu as the symbol, she would use their popularity to help millions of babies. She smiled to herself, jotting down new ideas. Wade had been right to say that passion fed her creativity, but he had never imagined that the fire would come more from her being someone’s mother rather than someone’s lover.