Amber Beach

by Elizabeth Lowell

  Nothing.

  He munched on cheese and crackers, drank a beer, and watched while Honor tossed pesto and pasta together.

  “Do you mind if I draw while the salmon cooks?” she asked, setting the pasta aside. “I keep thinking about that face in the amber.”

  “I don’t expect to be entertained.”

  She gave him a slanting, rather wary glance and headed for her sketch pad.

  The telephone rang. Jake expected Honor to hurry across the room and grab it eagerly. Instead, she walked slowly and extended her hand to the receiver as though she expected to be bitten.

  “Hello,” she said.

  “Disassociate yourself from Mr. Mallory or your brother will suffer.”

  “What? Who is this? Where is—”

  The phone went dead. She looked at it in disgust and slammed the receiver back into the cradle. “Damn him!”

  “Who was it?”

  “I don’t know. Not Snake Eyes. This jerk started talking as soon as I said hello.”

  Jake shut the front door and walked to her. She was pale except for bright spots of anger and adrenaline burning on her cheeks.

  “How can you be sure it wasn’t Snake Eyes?” he asked.

  “Linear logic sure or hunch sure?”

  “Either one.”

  “Actually, it’s both. I knew it before he started talking. The silence was different. Anyway, his accent isn’t as broad as the one Snake Eyes had when he mumbled around at my front door.”

  “What kind of accent did this caller have?”

  “Not French,” Honor said, replaying the words in her mind. “Not quite German. Not Spanish. Not British.”

  “What do you mean, ‘not quite German’?”

  “I don’t know. It just wasn’t.”

  He didn’t push. There was no reason. The odds were nearly one hundred percent that the caller was from Russia itself or one of its satellite states on the Baltic Sea. Nothing new there.

  “What did he say?” Jake asked.

  Honor took a deep breath. It broke into pieces. Carefully she took another one. Then she looked at Jake with shadowed eyes.

  “He told me to get rid of you or Kyle would suffer,” she said simply.

  Jake’s eyes narrowed. “Divide and conquer.”

  “What?”

  “The oldest tactic in the book. And the best. Someone wants you isolated.”

  She looked out the window. The wild gold of the sun and restless blue of the sea were long gone, leaving only the kind of deep black she didn’t want to face alone.

  “Kyle . . .” Honor whispered. “My God, what am I going to do?”

  The anguish in her soft voice was like a knife in Jake’s conscience. He wanted to comfort her, to reassure her; and if he did, she would only feel all the more deeply betrayed when the truth came out.

  He told himself he would be doing everyone a favor if he pointed out all the logical, rational reasons why she shouldn’t send him away. He was still listing those reasons in his mind when he found himself holding out his hand.

  “Come here,” he said softly.

  Honor walked into his arms as though she had always known she belonged there. He held her the same way, cursing Kyle with every heartbeat.

  “What should I do?” she asked finally.

  “Whatever you can live with.”

  “What about Kyle?”

  “He’s a big boy. Worry about yourself.”

  “You keep telling me that.”

  “I keep hoping you’ll listen.”

  She laughed raggedly. “Talk to me, Jake. I need . . . to talk.”

  His arms tightened around her. “I’ll go or I’ll stay. Your choice, Honor.”

  “I don’t want to choose.” She burrowed against him as though the chill she felt was physical rather than mental. “Do you think whoever called has Kyle?”

  “No.”

  “Why?”

  “If he already has Kyle, there’s no point in hamstringing your search, is there?”

  She let out a shaky breath. “That was my second thought. A bluff rather than a real threat.”

  Jake brushed his lips against her hair too gently for her to feel. Each breath he took was sweet with the scent of warm woman.

  “What was your first thought?” he asked.

  “I was glad I wasn’t here alone. I’m beginning to hate the telephone.”

  “I’ll get you an answering machine.”

  “I have one. I just can’t bear to turn it on when I’m here. I keep thinking that Kyle might be on the other end.”

  There was nothing Jake could say to that. Certainly there was nothing that Honor would want to hear. So he simply stroked her chin-length, shiny hair and held her until she finally let go of him and moved away.

  “Thanks,” she said self-consciously. “I didn’t mean to, well, you know.”

  “Er, no.”

  “Cry on your shoulder.”

  He touched the dark blue flannel shirt where she had laid her head. “What are you talking about? It’s dry as a Baptist revival.”

  She laughed almost helplessly. Then she took a shaky breath and turned toward the kitchen. “About that wine . . .”

  “I’ll get it as soon as I check on the salmon.”

  The telephone rang again.

  Honor flinched. Jake headed toward the phone. She stopped him by grabbing his wrist.

  “No,” she said quickly. “I can handle it.” She picked up the phone. “Hello?”

  Jake tensed and watched her expression.

  “I’m sorry,” she said automatically. “He isn’t here right now. May I take a message?” She frowned. “Really? Can you hang on to it for a while? It’s paid for? Good. I’ll be in to get it when I can. Thank you.”

  “Who was it?” he asked as soon as Honor hung up.

  “A woman from Watermark Book Store. They have something that Kyle ordered.”

  “When?”

  “They didn’t say. Odd, though.”

  “What?”

  “I didn’t know my brother was interested in Russian history.”

  Neither did Jake, but saying it would raise more questions than he wanted to answer.

  “Modern stuff?” he asked casually.

  “No. She said the book is a catalog of the contents of Russian palaces before the Revolution. He had wanted one specifically on the palace known as Tsarskoye Selo, but there weren’t any available.”

  Jake went still. Before the Nazis invaded Russia, the Tsarskoye Selo had been the home of the Amber Room. His lips thinned and he wondered if alcohol would cut through the bitter taste of fairy dust in his mouth.

  “I’ll open the wine,” he said.

  Honor watched Jake stalk to the kitchen. She knew that he had just lost his temper, but she didn’t know why.

  “And men say that women are moody,” she muttered.

  If Jake heard her, he ignored the bait. He opened the wine, poured her a glass, and went out to brood over the barbecue.

  Honor didn’t make the mistake of tagging along. Her own temper was too uncertain. She picked up her sketch pad, took the amber out of its box, and lost herself in drawing. The Amber Man was still elusive, but she was certain of ultimately drawing him out of his golden prison.

  She didn’t know when she realized that what she was drawing looked like an echo of Jake’s strong features, but after she accepted it the drawing went much faster. It was both Jake and not—Jake, man and shadow, darkness and light, a smile from one direction and a cynically curving mouth from the other.

  After a while she became aware that Jake was standing nearby, watching her. She wondered if he recognized himself in the drawing. Probably not. Most people accepted the reversed image of themselves they saw in the mirror as reality.

  “Make yourself useful,” she said, handing him the piece of amber. “Hold this between me and a strong light source. I need to make certain that the flecks are deep enough to survive if the surface is smoothed and polis
hed.”

  Jake took the shade off a table lamp and held up the amber. She bent her head and went back to work.

  He tried not to notice that there were shades of gold buried deep in Honor’s hair, that her mouth was just full enough to tempt a saint, that the slim fingers holding the pencil would have felt good inside his pants, and her mouth would have felt even better. But nothing would feel as good as watching her come apart when he was buried to the hilt in her.

  The direction of his thoughts was echoed in the hard length of his erection. He was grateful that she was too busy drawing to notice.

  “You’re making me nervous,” Honor said after a time.

  “Afraid I’ll drop the amber?”

  “Nope. I’m feeling like Little Red again. Dinner-ish. Think the salmon is done, Granny?”

  “Do I look like your grandmother?”

  “Well,” she said without looking up, “you both have a nice mustache . . . .”

  Shaking his head, smiling despite the hungry ache in his crotch, Jake handed Honor the amber and went to check on the salmon.

  As soon as he was out of sight, she let out her breath and looked at the place where he had stood. She wouldn’t have been surprised to see smoke curling up from the floor. Or from her own chair. The way he had watched her was hot enough to cook both of them.

  She told herself that she didn’t need the kind of complication that an affair with Jake would bring. She didn’t have the emotional energy for it. And her emotions would definitely be involved. Without that, sex was more trouble than it was worth.

  Face it, she reminded herself briskly. Even with emotion, sex is more trouble than it’s worth. At least for a woman it was. Men did just fine on autopilot. Wham, bam, I’m outta here. No fuss, no muss, stuff it back in your pants and see if there’s a good game on TV.

  With an impatient movement Honor set aside her sketch pad and closed it. Yet the face locked within amber haunted her, calling silently to her. No matter how she felt about its living model, she couldn’t leave the face caught forever within time.

  Unfortunately she didn’t know how to free it. She only knew that her normal approach to designing sculpture wouldn’t work for amber in general and this piece of amber in particular. She simply hadn’t worked with amber enough to understand it the way she did harder stones.

  When Jake came back into the room carrying a platter of salmon, Honor was sitting and frowning fiercely at the amber. Her glass of wine hadn’t been touched.

  “I’m not the only one in a bad mood, am I?” he asked neutrally, setting the salmon down on the table. “Did you get another call while I was watching the fish?”

  She jumped, wondering how much time had passed. It was often like that when she started thinking about a design. The world simply went away.

  “No calls. I was just thinking about that face. If I try to design my usual bas—relief . . .” She shook her head and stood up abruptly. “It just won’t work. I’m sure of it.”

  “What about intaglio?”

  Honor stopped in the act of reaching for her wineglass. What she knew about intaglio could about be summarized very briefly: the opposite of cameo.

  “I’ve never tried designing something to be viewed through the gem rather than on its surface,” she said.

  “Why? Don’t like the result?”

  “It’s not that.” She put her wineglass on the table and went to the refrigerator. “I’m usually designing for quite small pieces or stones that aren’t translucent enough for intaglio to show through. Sometimes the gem is simply too hard for Faith to carve that way. Plus I never designed with amber until a month ago.”

  Honor set out the pasta and salad. Her eyes had a distant look in them that told Jake she was thinking about amber and intaglio.

  “Intaglio was popular in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries,” he said, “especially for amber. In some cases the internal carving would be backed with gold foil. When viewed from above, through the amber itself, the result is very striking, almost alive.”

  “How do you polish the carved area before you add the foil?”

  “Same way you carved it—carefully, with itty bitty tools.”

  When he leaned past her to pour wine for himself, his arm brushed hers. She jumped.

  “Sorry,” Jake said. What he didn’t say was that even when she was thinking about her work, she was strung so tight she damn near vibrated. “Didn’t mean to startle you.”

  “It’s not your fault. No matter what I’m doing, underneath it all I’m still worried about Kyle,” she admitted.

  “Understandable. Sit down and eat. Or are you too jumpy?”

  “No worse than breakfast or lunch.” She smiled wryly and sat. “I’m afraid I’m not one of those women who become artfully thin from worrying. Just the opposite.”

  “So what’s the problem? You could use a few more pounds.”

  “Bite your tongue.”

  “I’d rather bite your salmon.”

  Honor assured herself she had imagined a slight hesitation before Jake said “salmon.” Then she reached for the delectable pink fish and told herself to quit hoping. It was pretty clear after the long day on the boat that he wasn’t going to do anything about the prowling sexual tension that had grown between them. Though he obviously was a healthy male fully capable of getting an erection, he just as obviously wasn’t going to pursue it. Or her.

  Maybe he felt the same way she did about sex. About as exciting as cleaning the toilet.

  Depressing thought.

  Jake noticed that Honor hadn’t started eating. “No appetite after all?”

  Rather than answer, she forked in a bite of salmon. A moment later she made a throaty sound of surprise and delight.

  “Like it?” he asked.

  “Orgasmic.”

  His eyebrows climbed. “That good, huh?”

  “Better.”

  “Nothing’s better.”

  Since orgasm was just a word to her, Honor decided not to argue the point. She tucked another bite into her mouth and savored the salmon. She didn’t say another thing until she had eaten two servings of the fish and cleaned up her share of the salad and pesto. Then she settled back in her chair with a sigh of pleasure.

  “You should open a restaurant,” she said, covering a yawn.

  “You did the salad and pesto. Is your pesto recipe a Donovan family secret? I’ve been buying mine and it’s not half as good.”

  “Nope. My pesto recipe is the result of years of selfless sacrifice in the hope of a better future for all mankind.”

  “They don’t hand out a Nobel for pesto.”

  “Next thing you’ll tell me there isn’t a Santa Claus.”

  “Now that you mention—”

  “I’m crushed,” she interrupted, “just crushed. Anyway, the pesto was nothing compared to the fish,” she added with a wave of her hand that ended up covering another yawn.

  Jake stood up and began clearing the table.

  “I’ll take care of it,” she said, yawning again.

  “You’ll fall asleep first.”

  “Your point?” she muttered.

  “Go to bed. Tomorrow is already racing across Europe toward you.”

  “What an awful thought.”

  He laughed and ruffled her hair casually as he passed by her chair. “Don’t forget to brush your teeth.”

  For an instant Honor considered biting him. Hard.

  Instead, she decided to get even by taking him up on his offer. “Okay. Thanks.”

  Breath held, Jake watched Honor walk to the tiny bathroom that was just off the bedroom. For a second there, he had been sure she was going to sink her neat little teeth into his hand. He didn’t know what he would have done next, but he had no doubt about the ultimate outcome—the two of them locked in the kind of sweaty, hand-to-hand combat that had no losers.

  Cursing silently, he finished the dishes, scrubbing them hard enough to leave ruts in the shiny surface.

&nbs
p; The door to the bathroom opened. From the corner of his eye he saw the flash of color that was Honor as she went from the bathroom to the bedroom. The door didn’t quite shut behind her.

  When Jake finished cleaning up, he let himself out of the cottage. The door locked automatically behind him. The metal sound was cool and final. He walked down the gravel path to the dock. Every step of the way he congratulated himself on what a fine, honorable, noble, dumb son of a bitch he was, going off alone to a cold bed.

  12

  IT WAS STILL dark when Honor was startled awake. Her alarm clock wasn’t screaming at her, but her instincts were.

  She could hear the scratching sounds from the living room with terrible clarity. It sounded like someone was fumbling a key into the front door lock. Her heartbeat speeded. Kyle?

  But if it wasn’t . . .

  She realized suddenly that she hadn’t shot the bolt before she fell asleep.

  The vague scratching sounds continued. A chill prickled over her skin. She had a sickening feeling that it wasn’t her brother out there trying to get in.

  Part of her wanted to pull the covers over her head and pretend she wasn’t there at all. Part of her wanted to scream down the house.

  In the end she didn’t do either one. Making as little noise as possible, she eased from beneath the blankets and went barefoot to the bedroom door. It was open a few inches, just enough for air to circulate.

  A gust of cold swirled through the living room to the bedroom. The front door was wide open. A silhouette moved through the moonlight pouring inside. A human figure.

  A pencil of light came from a small flashlight. The beam played over Kyle’s desk. When the figure bent over and started opening drawers, reflected light showed only the black of a ski mask, dark jacket, and leather gloves.

  Fear and rage burst through Honor. The combination left her light-headed with adrenaline. The burglar was already inside.

  Silently she retreated from the doorway and went to the window. The new lock didn’t squeak when she opened it, but the old wooden frame did. It was much louder than the scratching noises had been.

  Fear of being trapped in the bedroom by the intruder slammed through Honor. She shoved upward with all her strength and then kicked through the bottom half of the opening, taking out the screen as she went through. She stumbled when she hit the ground, recovered, and ran toward the dock.